Sunday, December 21, 2008

Some days I want to stand on the roof of my office and scream “ I HATE MY PATIENTS!!!”.

Okay, I really don’t hate them. But some days I’m so sick of their shenanigans, the stupidity of insurance companies, the moronic behavior of some other healthcare professionals, and just the daily insanity of this field that I am now going to try writing this blog as my gripe forum.

I’m a medical specialist, seeing pretty much anything in my field that walks in the door. Maybe I’m just special, but it seems that I attract some remarkably “special” folks. I have no idea why. I don’t advertise (although my staff often accuses me of handing out flyers in trailer parks).

Either that, or it just seems that weird crap happens to me or my patients. If it seems like I’m laughing at the misfortune of a decent person, I don’t mean it that way. Sometimes things are just funny.

In 10 years of practice I’ve learned that, contrary to popular belief, being trailer trash has nothing to do with money. It’s a state of mind. Either that or a personality disorder.

Maybe I just see things differently. Maybe I really am a magnet to crazy people. Maybe no one really cares.

So since my staff and friends are sick of listening to me, I’m going to start venting online. My stories are true. The names and dates of occurrence have been changed to protect the innocent.

If I entertain you, I’m glad. If I offend you, I’m sorry. I’m not a very politically correct person. I tend to be profane, opinionated, and willing to call it as I see it. I don’t claim to be perfect, or even right. I’m just me.

I found you through another blog (totally unrelated to the medical field), and could not stop until I had read every post. Sure, it took a few days of reading here and there, but I couldn't bring myself to navigate away from the website! Damn funny stuff! I hope I have never been the kind of patient you write about here! Bookmarked!! :)

I came across your blog on TAP's website and spent the last 2 days reading every entry. After reading most entries I just want to say, "Ha ha ha DUH!!" People are so stupid. I am an EMT & I am a member of a group on Facebook called Stupid People Are My Job Security- your stories would fit right in!

Your blog is the first one I've ever subscribed to (don't tell TAP!) & it took me forever to even figure out how to do so (DUH!!)

Why do I see so many people posting their verification words in comments? I assume this came up in a post, but haven't read the comments on many posts so I don't know how it came up, but I wanna fit in too! :)

I'm CRAZY! And you know what? Crazy means you never have to explain what you do! This is different from insane; that is a legal term. It is also different from mentally ill; that is a medical term. Crazy just means...you never have to explain anything you do!

So now I've got to the beginning and can go back to a normal blogging life of just reading the latest post! Living in a non-English-speaking country I can't just nip down to the bookshop and buy replacements so the internet has become a source of great pleasure - and this is by far the funniest blog I've read so far. I've read every entry and almost every set of comments as they're often as good as the blog itself.

So thank you very much for the fun so far - and please don't decide to give up now I've joined the Grumpy fan club! And best wishes to MrsG and the kids - I think I'm glad they're not my grandkids, in the nicest possible way, of course! Not to forget the office staff - greetings to them too!

I found your site while searching online for treatments for severe migraines. Your name popped up and I clicked on it and have been hooked ever since. While I am on pain management program, I still suffer quite a bit and your blog has been a God send for me on particularly bad days. I get immersed in it and am able to forget the pain for awhile. Thank you for sharing your experiences :)

Officer Cynical led me here. I have read each of your entries and quite a few of the comments as well. All of your material has been thoroughly enjoyed. The only aspect which has offended me are the idiotic & rude people you have encountered (but for them, you'd likely have nothing interesting to blog). The following quotes are all I can offer in response to what you and your amazing staff deal with on a daily basis:

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." --Albert Einstein

"The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity." --Harlan Ellison

Love your blog! Like many others I read though them all and thought to myself...stupid IS universal! They are not all just targeting ME! Because of you (and like you my family and friends are tired of listening to me bitch) I started my own blog. Thank you for the free therapy!

Hey there Dr.Grumpy! I had been reading your blog for a long while and I find it funny and very interesting! You inspire me to make me own! Health care profesionals have to deal with a lot if things....its a miracle we are not insane! I am brand new at this but hopefully I will get to know more people related to what I do. Take care!

Dr. Grumpy~ You have made my list of daily check-ins when I'm online. I've made it through the entire blog and LOVE it! Can't tell you how many times I'd be laughing (almost to the point of crying) and my kids would come up and ask why I was laughing. I'm a nursing student and a single mom of four, sometimes its really hard to de-stress. Your blog did wonders during finals week this last week. Thanks and KEEP BLOGGING!!!!

I found my way here after I'd read some truly ridiculous stories on Not Always Right and Not Always Working (some of the personnel would do well to follow your and your staff's leads). I went looking on Google for more stories, and your blog came up.

I have adult-diagnosed Asperger's Syndrome (yes, by a real doctor :p ), and while things amuse me inside, it's hard to find things that make me laugh out loud. You, sir, have repeatedly accomplished that. Good work.

Just gotta say I got hooked on your blog big time Dr. G =) Read the whole thing from today all the way back to your first post here. I think somethings wrong with me, I definitely have a major case of summeritis right now. It causes me to binge read random things online for days on end, or binge view on Netflix until my eyeballs can't take it any longer. Without any studying to do, no late night 3am cram sessions and no impending doom if I don't study, my brain feels like its going to slide right out of my ears, and suddenly I find myself watching the sixth season of some reality TV show...... Anyway, just wanted to say this blog is way more interesting then those dry textbooks I should probably be dusting off and reviewing before Fall Quarter picks up in a few weeks....

I think the medical profession itself its a little nuts. I just spent 6 weeks working an Ebola Tx unit in Sierra Leone where I was assigned to lead a team of SL nurses, Cuban docs and nurses, and one ex pat and myself as nurses. So 7 of us would be sent in, speaking 3 different languages, mixed hierarchy of docs and nurses, to see 30-40 patients in under two hours. My complaints that such a mix of people with poor Spanish, English and Kreo language skills was a cluster F*** and that it most certainly did nothing to improve patient care. We could not communicate, and when we did manage, it was to argue over tx plans....I think. Think we could get this changed to teams of 3 where everyone could fluently speak a common language with one of those being a local nurse who spoke the native tongue to interpret (SL nurses are all fairly fluent in English)? Oh nooooo! Then it wouldn't be an international effort! Are you some sort of racist or bigot!? Well, yeah, guess I am when I can't understand a damn word anyone is speaking! We're in the middle of an Ebola epidemic and my fearless leaders were more concerned about image and PR than if I actually could effectively communicate re patient condition and tx plan. F***** morons. Happy ending--I assembled my own team of an ex pat and ambitious SL nurse who liked getting things done orderly, accurately, safely and fast. I know for a fact our pt survival rate was the highest by a factor of 2. Think about that for a second. 2 times higher once we could all understand each other and voice our two cents intelligently on the subject at hand. The above was about as funny as me being chastised for not remembering every single detail on my patients and writing it into charts outside of the red zone. Nothing in the Red Zone can come out of the red zone and there is no whiteboard large enough to nor time enough to write down all pertinent pt data to read from outside the fence and transfer into a Green zone chart. Recall we were dealing with 30-40 patients per team. I insisted bedside charting and pharmacy supplies inside was the best option where the person who would follow me could read exactly what I and others had done, including Rx administration, tx, assessments, etc. Oh, no, can't do that! Some of the patients might read the other patients charts! You idiots do know they're fighting Ebola, scared to death, and most can hardly move. I think reading the chart of the guy next to them is the least of their worries. But I won. I just started setting up bedside charts anyways and of course the other docs and nurses not only used them but relied on them. Well, frickin' duh! Sometimes, I swear we are the most over credentialed morons on the planet.

Welcome to my whining!

This blog is entirely for entertainment purposes. All posts about patients may be fictional, or be my experience, or were submitted by a reader, or any combination of the above. Factual statements may or may not be accurate.

Singing Foo!

Have Dr. Grumpy delivered automatically to your Kindle for only 99 cents a month! Sign up here!

Dr. Grumpy is for hire! Need an article written (humorous, medical, or otherwise) or want to commission a genuine Grumpy piece for your newspaper/magazine/toilet paper roll? Contact me to discuss subjects. You can reach me at the email address below, or through my Linked-In profile.

Note: I do not answer medical questions. If you are having a medical issue, see your own doctor. For all you know I'm really a Mongolian yak herder and have no medical training at all except in issues regarding the care and feeding of Mongolian yaks.